Brian Schmidt

Moderator

Member since
January 2011
From: Wisconsin
1,532 posts

Posted by Brian Schmidt on Thursday, March 7, 2019 8:45 AM

ROME, N.Y. — Joseph H. Boardman, Amtrak’s second-longest-serving president and CEO, has died. Boardman, 70, suffered a stroke while vacationing with his wife and family in Florida on March 5 and passed away early this morning, Amtrak anno...

http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/03/07-joe-boardman-former-amtrak-president-dies

Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine

Reply

Miningman

Member since
September 2013
6,199 posts

Posted by Miningman on Thursday, March 7, 2019 8:01 PM

From Mike: Very Nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RgT6ra3YYk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O7_ysu2Qfw&t=7m30s

Reply

Miningman

Member since
September 2013
6,199 posts

Posted by Miningman on Friday, March 8, 2019 4:42 PM

Excerpt from 2010 TQ interview

https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/2011_build/administrative_law/tq2010spring_optimized.pdf

TQ: How did you run the ranks to become FRA’s 11th Administrator?

Boardman: The way I started, I was a bus driver for the campus bus system during my college years at Cornell University to try to help pay for my education. I lived across the street from the bus company. I was raised on a dairy farm so to me work was you worked 365, 7 days a week, 24 hours – not 24 hours obviously, but you worked all the time. That’s your way of life. Well, I found in transportation a kindred spirit, because in transportation we work all the time. I think I worked more as a bus driver than I did studying in college. When I finished college, and I had already been in the Air Force for four years, there was an opportunity to run a small transit system in my hometown of Rome, New York. While I was there, I picked up the responsibility to run the parking authority, the downtown redevelopment, and then the Utica Transit Authority, which was a neighboring system.

TQ: How did you get from being a bus driver to running the system?

Boardman: Well, I had my education; there was a civil service test that was involved with it. I scored on top of the list and I was selected. It was my first political experience actually. The two people underneath me on the list were political opponents of the Mayor of that community and he didn’t want them to be the transit manager for that community. My family’s name was known; I represented the least risk, I guess, so that’s how I got to manage the transit system. In 1981, there was an opening as Commissioner of Transportation in Broome County, New York. I went ahead and got my Master’s at Binghamton University. I then started running their transit system, which included their fleet organization. In 1988, the county executive lost his election, I lost my job, and again I was at a crossroads.

I started a company, Progressive Transportation, on my own with a couple of partners. Today, you’ll see in DC the Circulator buses. They were not part of the system when I was there, but they’re an outgrowth of Progressive, which is now First Transit, and was bought by Coach USA. We started managing transit systems all over New York and those transit systems included Dutchess County and ten other county and transit systems in the State of New York, including commuter connections to the rail systems and so forth. I stayed with that and grew the company until 1995. I really wanted to do something in the public sector and applied for Commissioner of Transportation for New York State, which I did not get. But, I got offered the position of Assistant Commissioner for Public Transportation, which made sense to me. That job was responsible for buses and rail and any public transit operation in New York State.

TQ: Was that out of Albany?

Boardman: Yes. From there, I moved up to the First Deputy Commissioner, which is actually like the Chief Operating Officer of the Department of Transportation (DOT). About a year and a half later, I moved up to be the Commissioner and stayed there for ten years. I was the longest-serving New York State Commissioner in history. While there, I began to put together a different vision and transformation, which included rail, for the New York State DOT. We rebuilt the Turbo trains, but we ran into difficulties with Amtrak and the switch from George Warrington to David Gunn running Amtrak. I ended up telling Amtrak that they stole my Turbos.